


The Lure

by TasheryS



Category: Blake's 7, Wiseguy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1997-01-01
Updated: 1997-01-01
Packaged: 2017-10-31 22:34:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/349044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TasheryS/pseuds/TasheryS
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Originally published in the fanzine <a href="http://fanlore.org/wiki/Risk_(Wiseguy_and_Blake's_7_zine)">Risk</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Lure

Avon glanced around the dimly lit flight deck, assuring himself he was alone.  “Replay the message, Orac.”

+Again?+

“Again,” Avon answered sharply.

The computer’s lights whirled in the plastic casing like a mechanical sigh of annoyance.  _“We need transportation,”_ a woman’s voice covered desperation with controlled calm.  _“Our source within Space Command reports the Federation suspect our location, and will soon launch an attack to wipe out our base.  We need to get out, and fast.”_

Avon paced to the computer and looked down at the circuitry, wishing he could wrench certainty from it.  “The voice match is positive?”

+ _That_ voice is clear enough for a full analysis.  It is that of the resistance fighter Hiromi, last known to be working with Avalon.  The origin of the transmission is the planet Stygios, but the message was recorded previously to its transmission+

Avon closed a tense hand on the casing.  “Filter out Hiromi’s voice.  Play the background only.”

+I have done so several times.  You have already heard what the human ear is capable of hearing, and you have my analysis of the rest,+ the computer answered waspishly.  Soon it would stop cooperating altogether.

“Nevertheless,” Avon snapped.

The static increased.  Through it a child’s voice raised in a question, the words indistinguishable.  Another voice answered, impatience held in check, the tone determinedly kind.

“The voice of the adult male . . . “

+. . . _May_ be Blake’s.+

Avon sat on the couch, rubbing the ache above his eyes.  The encryption was one Avalon often used.  So far, the Federation had not broken it.  So far as was known, he corrected himself.  Blake’s voice — if it was Blake’s — was below ordinary auditory level.  Nor was the transmission directed specifically to the Liberator.  If it was a snare, it was a shrewd one.

That was what worried him.

“Yes, it may be a trap.  But what if it isn’t?”

Avon whipped around.  Cally stood outlined by the white illumination of the corridor.  He glared at her.  “Stealthy, aren’t you?”

It was an unfair shot, considering how rarely she used her Auron abilities to pry, and never for her own gain—a temptation he himself would be unable to resist in her place.  Ignoring his hostility, she descended the steps and sat beside him on the couch.  “If it isn’t a trap, he may need us.”

“If it isn’t.  If the voice is Blake’s.”  He paused and added grimly, “If the Federation hasn’t already got there.  That message was a recording.”

Cally shrugged slightly.  “For continuous transmission.  Standard practice.”

“Yes.  But what if the Federation have already landed on Stygios?  What if they are the ones transmitting the recording?”

 “All the more reason to go,” she argued.  “We may come in time to stop a massacre.  Even if the voice isn’t Blake’s, there’s still Hiromi and her group.”

When Liberator rescued Avalon, they had taken her to Hiromi’s group.  Blake and Cally had spent several days among them, and Cally had formed a friendship with Hiromi, whose fierce determination was so like her own.  But a troupe of ragtag guerrillas were not sufficient reason to risk Liberator.  And if Blake was with them, he chose not to contact Liberator.  He had abandoned them, and he chose to keep things that way.

 _Abandoned me._   Avon stopped his thoughts cold.  Cally was far too receptive to him.  The last thing he needed was for her to discover his real feelings toward Blake.  To pity him because Blake had run rather than accept the only way he could give his commitment.

“Stygios is in the third sector,” he said.  “Del Grant and Lindor are both closer to it than we are.  They will have picked up the signal first, and will have more chance of making the evacuation before the Federation arrive.  Even at standard by twelve it would take us two days.”

“It will take the Federation longer.   If no one else is on the way, we’re Hiromi’s only hope.”  She challenged, “Maybe Blake’s, too.”

“Perhaps Blake is trying very hard _not_ to attract our attention.”

She studied him, inscrutable.

Anger rasped his nerves.  “After our involvement in Servalan’s failures on Earth and Sardos, she will want revenge.  This is precisely the sort of lure she might invent.”

“Perhaps.  But a friend’s need is worth the risk.”

“Is it?”  He pocketed Orac’s key and left the flight deck.

 ±

Avon rose weary from insomnia.  He shaved and dressed even more meticulously than usual.  He’d be damned before he’d let Cally see the toll his internal war had taken.  He’d made his decision.  It was the only one consistent with rational self-interest. Entering the flight deck, he found the whole crew, except Vila who’d had the late watch.  Avon paused, surprised.  Liberator was _en route_ to a neutral to pick up supplies.  They would not arrive for hours, and anticipated no trouble.  “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”  Tarrant met his glance defiantly.

Avon narrowed his eyes.  “Destination, Zen?”

+The planet Stygios.+

Avon faced Cally with a cold flare of anger.

“We’re not ignoring this one, Avon,” Tarrant said.

Avon could, and did, ignore Tarrant.

“We must,” Cally said simply.

“I agree,” Dayna put in her two credits’ worth, but not content with out-voting him, couldn’t resist urging his support.  “If Blake’s there, don’t we owe him that much loyalty?”

“Yours?” Avon rounded on her.  “To a total stranger?”

“To someone you trusted enough to fight beside.  That’s enough for me.”

Avon glared at her, then stalked to his position.  He should have realized Cally wouldn’t keep quiet.  Not about this.  As he punched up a status report it occurred to him that maybe he had realized.  Sleepless though he was, what if he had left the flight deck for precisely that reason?  But he banished the notion to the oblivion it deserved.  He was trapped, and he was annoyed.  Since he had no choice, he would go to Stygios.  If Blake’s life was in danger, he would transport him to safety.  But that was as far as it went.  He had survived the sharp, immediate pain of Blake’s abandonment.  After finding Anna only to lose her more devastatingly then before, he had conquered the weakness of feeling pain at all.  He refused to lay himself open to all that again.  Not for anyone.

 ±

“Good luck.” Vila slid the teleport control.  The familiar tingling in all the senses gave way to a blood-hued glare, and tumbled shapes.  The wreckage of buildings.  Avon snapped around.  Nothing alive moved among the mounds of concrete and melted structural plastic.  A chill breeze mouthed the ruins toothlessly, muttering in red whirls of dust.  “The Federation’s beat us to it,” Dayna said bitterly.

Avon opened his communicator channel.  “Down safe, but the base is destroyed.”

“If the Federation’s been here, what makes you think they aren’t still?” came Vila’s nervous response.

“Nothing.”  Avon smiled grimly.

“Look, if they’re lurking on the far side of the planet—”

“—Then we’d better be quick about it,” Cally said into her bracelet.  “Blake or some of the others may be alive.”

Vila subsided.

Tarrant sniffed the air.  “Those red clouds and that odor.  TRV bombs.  The Federation uses them at close range.  Not radioactive, but they poison the water supply.”

Avon let that go without comment.  He was used to the young pilot stating the obvious as if it were his own special knowledge.  And used to him missing the equally obvious.

“Split up to cover the ground faster?” Cally asked.

“In twos,” Avon answered.  If he smelled what he thought he did, things were drastically wrong.

Cally moved off, Dayna sticking with her.  Avon headed for the wreckage of the nearest building, every sense alert.  The rubble was treacherous, the footing unstable and undermined by pits.  Where the draft had not stirred it, the rust-red dust of the bombing obscured every horizontal surface.  “Plenty of damage, but no bodies, “Tarrant remarked.  “As I read this it may not be too disastrous.  Grant or Sarkoff’s forces came to their aid, and they escaped in time.  The Federation commander destroyed the deserted base to make sure they couldn’t return.”

Avon’s communicator chimed.  “We’ve found a body,” Dayna sounded like she was trying to speak without breathing.  “It isn’t a pretty sight, but Cally says he wasn’t big enough to be Blake.”

“Avon,” Cally added, “this man has been dead at least a week.”

Tarrant turned, startled.  “Just how long did you keep that message secret from us?”

Avon gave him a hard look.  “Might he have died before the bombing?” he asked Cally.

“There is wreckage beneath him.”

_As he had thought._

“Avon,” Tarrant needled.  “I asked you a question.”

Avon lowered his wrist.  “Six hours.  That means someone transmitted it at least three days after this base was destroyed.”  He studied the dust-laden debris, thinking of their one enemy who was astute enough — and determined enough — to set this sort of trap.  And who might guess enough about him to use Blake are a lure.  She had done it on Obsidian, and it had worked.  His jaw clenched.  If he was playing the fool he had only himself to blame.  “I told you it could be a trap,” he snarled at Tarrant.

“Servalan?”

“Who else?”

But the pilot’s heroic self-image rose all too predictably to the challenge.  “Even if it is, there may be survivors.”  Off he stalked, weapon at an erectile angle, carnelian dust gusting about his shins.

Avon followed, taking more time than the younger man to observe his surroundings, but staying close enough to watch the his back.  Irritant though he was, they could not afford to lose him.  They entered what had been an alley between two long buildings, now choked off at the far end.  The hollow lament of the wind continued, but at least the ruins on either side kept its chill out.  Fragments of casing littered the ground, shards of weaponry, unidentifiable metal scraps twisted into tortured phantasms, all shrouded in red dust.  A sheet of high tensile plastic lay contorted and fused, its strength turned brittle by fire.  A long, clean crack severed it, as if something had disturbed it after cooling.  Alertness renewed, Avon searched the ground.  Nearby he found a small bare patch.  Within it, fine lines of dust.  A prickle crept up his back.

The pattern of a boot sole.

Tarrant joined him.  “Not Federation issue.”

“I think we can safely say we’ve seen no sign of a Federation landing,” Avon kept his voice low.  They had been talking too carelessly before.  “At least, not after the bombing.  Presumably, they landed and took anything of interest first.”  _Or_ , he thought, _anyone_.

“That mark was made after the dust settled.  A survivor.”

“Possibly.” Avon glanced behind them.

“These two buildings look like the headquarters.”

“Agreed.”

“Didn’t Orac say Hiromi’s recording was made underground?”

Avon nodded.  “It stands to reason the tunnels are directly beneath us.”

Tarrant circled out, scanning the littered ground.  After covering a little distance he pointed at the ground.  Avon gave Cally and Dayna the coordinates.

The two women picked their way through the rubble, and Tarrant showed them the prints leading toward the remains of the longer building.  “Anything else?” Avon quietly asked Cally.

“No survivors.”

“No more corpses, either,” Dayna added.  “Either they got out of here in time, or they’re with the survivor.”

Avon saw no reason to assume those were the only possibilities.

Tarrant gestured forward with his blaster.  “Watch yourselves.  If they’re friends we don’t want them realizing it too late.”  Avon brought up the rear.  If this was a trap, their escape route might be more important than their way in.  A ripped angle of doorway remained, but no door.  Silence beyond.  They peered into semidarkness blazing with bright patches where the roof was blown away.  Among structural debris lay the burned wreckage of mattresses, book screens, an overturned chair.  No one was visible, dead or alive.  A shattered musical instrument lay at Avon’s feet.  With the whole base to choose from, dozens of rebels had jammed together in this one building for their living quarters.  “Cozy,” he could not resist remarking.

“Not anymore,” Dayna chose to miss his irony.  With angry sorrow she surveyed the destruction.  Avon did the same, but scarcely saw the strangers’ shattered belongings in his search for some familiar fragment, anything recognizable as Blake’s.

 _“Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly.”_   The words echoed from the far reach of the wreckage.

Avon whirled, thumb on the trigger.

A light snapped on, outlining a crazily leaning doorway.  A man stood silhouetted by the illumination.  “’Cept this ain’t no parlor, and to me you look like just another swarm of spiders.  Come on down.”  He kicked aside a broken footlocker and disappeared beyond the light.

Cally glanced doubtfully at Avon.  He didn’t like it any better than she did, but if they wanted information, this looked like the only source.  He raised a brow at her.  “Since we’ve been issued such a gracious invitation.”

She gave him a wry look.

As they neared the light, the hum of a generator grew audible.  Avon glanced at the footlocker as they passed.  It seemed undamaged by the blast, but its lock had been forced.  Concrete steps led down.  With a glance behind, Avon descended first.  More light, and a door hanging from a single hinge.  Avon paused, feeling the others’ readiness, then nodded.  They burst in, weapons aimed in all directions.  The far end of the underground room had collapsed, crushing a bank of computers.  At the near end stood a communication console.  Their host occupied a chair behind it.  He was alone.  He gestured with offhand graciousness, as if welcoming them into an executive office.  The parody was plainly intentional.  “Have a seat.  If you can find one.”

They remained standing, weapons aimed at him, and at the only door.  The stranger remained tilted back his chair, appraising them with dark, shrewd eyes above a sharp nose.  Small, shallow scars lightly marked his face.  In response to Avon’s scrutiny a little smile played on his thin lips.  Avon had never met the man before, but his face seemed familiar.

“Where are the others?” Cally demanded.

“You mean Hiromi?”  He folded his hands on the console.

To all appearances, the situation was exactly what it seemed.  The stranger really was alone, facing their weapons empty handed.  Avon did not like his confidence.  He pinioned the man with a cold stare.  “And others.”

The mobile lips flicked a mocking smile.   “My soldiers?  A pal?”  The upper one curled in ridicule.  “What you see is what there is.”  He leaned forward, front legs of the chair on the floor.  “Still, maybe I can help you.  Maybe you can help me.  So I figure we might make a deal.”

“You know nothing about us,” Tarrant confronted him.  “What makes you think we have anything you want?”

Their host ignored him.  “How’s things on the Liberator, Avon?”

Avon narrowed his eyes.  “All right, you know who we are.  You hardly look like a survivor desperate for rescue, so who are you, and what do you want?”

“Call me Sonny,” the stranger answered noncommittally.

The dark hair going silver at the temples, the experienced caginess and incongruously boyish name.  Familiar.  Avon searched his memory for a surname and retrieved an alliterative, the impression of cold metal, a tomb.  A Federation file Orac had once accessed on Terra Nostra boss Sonny Steelgrave.  From his pleasure planet New Atlantis he ran the mob’s operations in the third sector.  His reputation made him the most flamboyant of the Terra Nostra’s key figures, and one of the most dangerous.

But what was he doing _here_?

Avon gave him a small, chill smile.  “All right…Sonny.  You lured us here, you have our attention.  I repeat, what do you want?”

“I’m a smuggler.  I got a buyer, and a promising plan.  What I don’t have is the technical expertise to pull off a heist against a top security system.”  He leaned forward, the darkness of his eyes intensifying.  “You do.”

Avon felt himself draw in against it.  “And in return?”

“Half the take, and it’ll be big.  As an extra, I’ll throw in Hiromi, alive, undamaged, and willing to talk about Blake.”

“She knows where he is?” Cally asked.

Steelgrave balanced his chair slowly back deliberately drawing it out, watching them the whole time.  “She won’t tell me.  But she did agree to tell you.”

“You expect us to do whatever you want without a shred of proof?” Tarrant scoffed.  “You’re no Resistance gun runner.  We’d have heard of you.”  He eyed the man’s tailored  jumpsuit.  “In fact, you couldn’t look more upper echelon Federation if you tried.”

Avon smiled to himself.  No doubt the gangster did try.  His getup was expensive enough, but diagonal fragments of steel swashed his blue suede chest with too much flare.  The correct elan, but disreputably excessive.

But Steelgrave was smiling too.  “I’m a lotta things, Tarrant, but Federation isn’t one of them.”  The smile faded.  “Least of all now.”  He flexed his shoulders, eyes going cold.  A killer’s eyes.

Impelled by some unrevealed thought, he stood, shoving back his chair.  “Federation agent, you think that’s what I am?”  He paced to a pile of fallen metal shelves.  Every movement exuded the assurance of a trained fighter.  Power flowed from muscular shoulders and arms into a smallish, lithe body, taut with raw energy.  “A Federation agent.”  He turned to face them, eyes two shards of black ice.  The face of a man barely controlling a conflagration of rage.

Steelgrave had been betrayed.  Avon knew it as certainly as he knew his own name.  There was no other reason for a man like that to risk himself this way.  He needed their help because he could no longer depend on the Terra Nostra.  The only question was whether after the heist he planned to sell them for bounty money.  Given the man’s reputation, the probable answer was yes.

The only question, but one.  If he had Hiromi, could she lead them to Blake?

“If you had nothing to do with the attack on this planet, how did you know about it?” Dayna asked.

“The same way the rebels did.  Friends on the inside.  When I got here, they’d already blown the place.  The rebels got away, all but Hiromi and two others who died in the bombing.  I took her to a safe place, got her the medical attention she needed.”

“In a Federation prison?” Tarrant asked.

Steelgrave’s expression hardened.  “She’s my guest.”

“You expect us to believe that?” Tarrant demanded.

“I believe him,” Avon said.

“You do?” Tarrant came up short in astonishment.

Avon gave a tight smile.  “As a matter of fact, I do.”

“Convert to blind faith if you want, but don’t believe I’m about to go off with him.”

“I’m not asking you to,” Steelgrave told him.  “I only want Avon.”

Tarrant bristled, this time in earnest.  Probably more slighted ego than objection to losing him, Avon thought with detached amusement.

Steelgrave prowled from the shelves to the console, disdaining to notice their weapons’ aim following him.  Whatever he had lost, he had not lost his courage.  “I don’t stand a chance with a big ship and landing party.  Two might get away with it.”  He pushed the chair out of his path, then turned to Avon.  “I want to hit Kythera.”  An eyebrow raised expectantly.  “Yeah,” he said, seeing  Avon understood.  A rapacious light played in his eyes.  “The factory where they make neutrotopes.”

Avon gave him a shark smile, amused at his greed, and the kindred flicker he felt in himself.  “And if we succeed?”

“We split the proceeds fifty fifty, and you get Hiromi.”

Avon let a few more teeth show.

“Oh yeah,” Steelgrave urged, voice sinking to a light, husky purr.  “I knew you’d like that.”

“Wait a minute—“ Tarrant began.

Dayna frowned doubtfully.

Cally watched them both, torn between hope, worry and distrust.

“Whatcha say, Avon?  Are you in this with me?”

“Possibly.”

±

Docking Steelgrave’s ship in the hold was a simple procedure.  The maneuvers aboard Liberator demanded more finesse.  “I never heard of any smuggler called Sonny,” Vila said as the small ship left Stygios and approached Liberator.  He turned to Cally at her flight position.  “Did Jenna ever mention that name?”

“Not that I remember.”

“What’s worth the risk of bringing aboard a stranger we’ve never heard of?  And where does he want us to go?”

“Kythera,” Avon answered.

“Neutrotopes?”  The thief‘s eyes went dreamy.

Avon smiled to himself.  No more resistance from that quarter.

“He’s in position.”  But Tarrant’s hands remained idle on the controls.

“I think we’re bringing him aboard before we know enough about him,” Dayna said.

“Except that he may be our link to Blake,” Cally answered quietly.

Tarrant looked down at Avon.  “Why is everyone wondering who he is except you?  Have you heard of him?”

“A smuggler named Sonny?  No.”  If they knew who Steelgrave was they might refuse outright to bring him on Liberator.  Avon had enough doubts of his own without battling the others.

“Let’s see what Orac says about him.”

“By all means, let us do that as we smash broadside into him.”

“Open the hold,” Tarrant told Vila.  But he was too cocky about his piloting skills to be seriously decoyed.  “We agreed.  No one comes aboard without majority consent.”

“He agreed to leave his gun on his ship.  Zen, Orac, you will respond only to the commands of myself, Cally, Tarrant, Dayna and Vila.  Now.  Do I hear a majority in disagreement?”

Neutrotopes gleamed in Vila’s eyes.  Cally looked worried, but did not speak.  Dayna and Tarrant glanced at each other, but they were a minority.  Dayna sighed.

“All right.  But we find out more before setting course for Kythera.”

Avon intended to do exactly that, though not in their hearing.  How much he would instruct Orac to tell them depended on what he learned.

“Signal him to maintain position,” Tarrant told Cally.  “Going in.”

The docking went without incident.  The visual of the ship in the hold confirmed what Zen had reported, a yacht class vessel, lightly armed.  According to the sensors, only one was aboard.

“Let’s go meet our guest,” Vila suggested eagerly.

“All of us,” Tarrant added.  “Except one to watch the flight deck.”

“Agreed.  I’ll stay.”  Once alone, Avon drew his weapon.  Tarrant was right about one thing.  Until they knew more, it was impossible to judge Steelgrave’s real intentions.  “Zen, under no circumstances allow our guest to take a weapon from the armory.  Orac, while the yacht is aboard, deactivate its homing devices.”

The light, slightly husky purr of Steelgrave’s voice sounded in the corridor.  “Oh yeah, I get around.”  The mobster paused in the entrance.  “ _Look_ at _this_.”  He pursed his lips in admiration.  “I’ve never seen s ship like this.”

“You’d better hope you never do.”  Avon smiled slightly at the vigilant look the gangster shot him.

“If you do, it’ll belong to hostile aliens,” Vila clarified.

“Ooo.”  Steelgrave stopped in front of Zen, eyes darting like electrons as they followed the intricate rhythms of the lights.  He ran a finger over the autonav display, peered at the console beside the couch, stuck an inquisitive nose over Vila’s shoulder to study his readout.  Even a trained Federation pilot could have gathered little from the inspection, but Avon did not like the avarice kindling those expressive eyes.  The man might know little about computers, but he would know weapons.  The Terra Nostra’s style of fighting was based on traditions from ancient Earth’s notorious streets of New York.  Rumor said the best Terra Nostra combatants preferred a simple, and all too concealable, implement of wire, which they could slip around a victim’s neck so quickly that reflexes were useless.  Watching Steelgrave prowl on the balls of his feet, Avon suspected they had taken on board one of the very best.

“Sleek,” he murmured, stroking the weaponry console.  “I like your style, Avon.”  Presumably he meant Liberator’s power, but Avon felt as if the touch had grazed him.

Vila’s mouth quirked at their guest’s flirtation with the ship.  Dayna looked dubious, but she was also amused.

Avon’s hand tightened on the weapon he held concealed behind the console.  Rumor called Sonny Steelgrave’s charm disarming.  ‘Fatal’ was another word it used.  Thinking him no more than a renegade smuggler, the others were already beginning to succumb.  This was too dangerous.

As if feeling Avon’s displeasure, Steelgrave lowered his eyes to the level of his hidden weapon.  He gave a little wink.

“Dayna,” Avon said, “show our guest to a cabin.  See if there’s anything he needs.”

Dayna caught his eye, understanding his warning, and his unspoken order to keep the man off the flight deck for a while.  Steelgrave smiled, not missing any of it, but he followed her out with good grace.  “You know what I’d really like, Dayna?” his voice hovered playfully, pausing just long enough.  “An exercise room.  You got sump’n like that?”  His voice faded down the corridor.

Avon waited another few moments.  “Orac.  Identify the man who just left the flight deck.”

Orac’s hum increased.  +Salvatore Steelgrave,+ it answered after scant seconds.  +According to Federation records, he ran Terra Nostra operations on New Atlantis.+

“Sonny _Steelgrave_ ,” Vila’s alarm was tinged with reverence.

Tarrant shot Avon a suspicious look.

“ _Ran_ , Orac?”

+Until thirteen days ago Sonny Steelgrave owned of one of the most lucrative pleasure planets in the galaxy, and controlled smuggling networks extending throughout the third sector.  He profited heavily in the illegal dealings of the former president of the Federation.  Despite the Terra Nostra’s setback when Blake destroyed the shadow cultivation on Zondar, Steelgrave’s smuggling rings remained profitable.  For him, and for the president.  Aside from the token arrests of a few pilots and crooked minor officials, Steelgrave conducted his business unhindered.+

Avon nodded.  “Then, Servalan grabbed the presidency.”

+But not control of the Terra Nostra.  A remnant of the old party retained that.  In fact, most who escaped Servalan’s coup now live in exile on Terra Nostra planets like New Atlantis.+

“Very comfy exile,” Vila remarked enviously.

“It would be, except for Servalan,” Tarrant answered.  “The Terra Nostra must pay kickback, but anything that big that she doesn’t control, she doesn’t want around.”

+ _If_ you will allow me to continue.+

No innocent to the pleasures of despotism itself, the computer waited for absolute silence before going on.  +Servalan had special Federation operatives trained to work under deep cover within the Terra Nostra.  One was placed as an enforcer in Steelgrave’s organization.  Steelgrave trusted the agent, and soon made him his right hand.  Thirteen days ago that agent brought in Federation forces, resulting in a total takeover of New Atlantis.  There was only one flaw.  Steelgrave escaped.+

“But with the profits from even one neutrotope, he could buy a first class ticket back into the Terra Nostra in a week,” Vila said.  “Smooth.”

“If he can pull it off,” Tarrant answered.

“And if we help him.”  Cally frowned at Avon.  “You remember Hannah.  You’ve seen what the Terra Nostra does to people.  That’s what we’d be furthering.”

“What difference whether it’s Steelgrave or someone else?” Avon replied.  “Or do you propose to take on the whole Terra Nostra single handed?”

“Someone should,” the Auron returned.

Avon lifted a brow.  “The last time you did, it was to rescue Blake.  You’ve changed your mind about that?”

“…You needed rescuing from the Terra Nostra too, from what I’ve heard,” Dayna reminded him.

“Don’t worry, I don’t expect you to risk yourselves unduly.”

“What I want to know is why you’re so eager to risk your neck,” Tarrant challenged.  “Let’s forget your little charade with Orac.  You knew who Steelgrave was before you let him on board.”

Avon smiled ironically.  “I was hardly likely to throw in with some small time smuggler, was I?  A man like Steelgrave won’t have come this far without an intriguing plan.”

“Which might involve intriguing us straight into the hands of the Federation.”

“Not us.  Me.  In other words, Tarrant, this is none of your business.”

“Then I’ll go with you,” Cally offered.  Clear as cool water, her thought touched him, _Tarrant owes Blake nothing.  I owe him much_.

“No.”  Avon glared at her.  “I want the neutrotope profits, and the independence of a fortune I do not share with the rest of you.”

“And if he’s luring you into a trap?”

“Then you can be glad you don’t share in that, either.”

±

 “Way I see it, having a Terra Nostra boss for a pal could be a real ace in the hole,” Vila said.  “You never know when he might come in handy.”

Avon spared the thief a quarter of a glance.  “Quite.  To you this time, to Servalan the next—at your expense.  Or have you forgotten Largo and Space City?”

“Sonny’s not Largo.  His heart’s in the right place.  Have a pint with him and you’ll hear the funniest, dirtiest jokes this side of CF1.”

“That makes all the difference.”  Avon continued with his navigational check.

“He knows a virtuoso when he sees one,” Vila continued archly.  “He’s a clever pupil, too.”

 Avon looked up.  “You haven’t been teaching Steelgrave your tricks?”

“A few simple ones.  Pinching a wrist chronometer, opening a few easy locks.  Nothing he could use to get at the armory or jewels.”

“What about sidling up to Dayna and lifting her weapon from her holster?”

“Dayna’s wise to that one.  I’ve tried it.”  Vila smiled wickedly, ignoring the fact that Dayna had threatened to whack off his fingers with a laser saw the next time she felt them creeping.  “Besides, Sonny’s just being courtly to her.  Everybody knows it’s you he’s got eyes for.” 

Avon paused, startled.  The thief smirked as if he’d scored a point.  Avon gave him a chilly look.  “Don’t teach him any more tricks.”

Hearing he meant it, Vila fell into sullen silence.  Avon finished his check and pulled Orac’s stand closer to the couch.

“Can’t imagine it makes much difference,” Vila addressed his remark to Orac.  “I bet he’s got plenty of tricks of his own.  If it was me he wanted, I’d let him show them to me, too.  Why not?  After all, they’d just be wasted on a chunk of dry ice like Avon.”  With that, he made his exit down the starboard corridor.

So it was not merely his imagination.  Steelgrave had set himself to charm all of his hosts, no doubt to get whatever he could from them.  But not from him.  From him, the man asked nothing.  Avon suspected a more devious game of cat and mouse.  Subtler.  More charged.  More dangerous.  He reached for the pocket of his jacket, where Orac’s key was, and where it was going to stay when not in use, as long as Steelgrave was on the ship.

Quiet steps in the port corridor made him freeze.  He stepped away from Orac just as Steelgrave showed dark against the illuminated top of the stairs.  Avon nodded curtly, and sat on the couch.

Steelgrave took the steep, narrow stairs with a dancing little stride, lithe, quick, razor sharp.    As if even in loss and exile he exulted in his total ownership of himself.  He wore a loose one piece suit as if he planned a heavy workout later.  The man was a perpetual motion machine. Avon wondered if his energy ever decreased to merely human level.

“Everybody else tucked in, soundly snoozing?  —Do Aurons sleep?”

“How should I know?” Avon lied.

The gangster sat on the couch across from Avon.  His jumpsuit shimmered with hematite.  “She’s a pretty lady.”

And he was far too inquisitive.  “Kythera doesn’t produce neutrotopes by the freighter-load.  What makes you think there will be any to steal?”

“I’ll take my chances,”  This close, his eyes seemed wide and brilliant-dark as a universe, and just as full of secrets.

Avon gave him a small, ironic smile.  “I did some research.  Currently there are two neutrotopes on Kythera, assembled and awaiting shipment.  Two neutrotopes, two of us.  A fortunate coincidence?”

Steelgrave’s eyebrows went up.  “That a fact?”

According to Orac, one of the neutrotopes had been completed before Steelgrave’s downfall.  It was possible he had learned that when he still had resources and influence.  Even half the profits from one would bring enough to set himself up nicely.  Perhaps the second was news to him, a welcome bonus.

Or perhaps his information was more recent, and the deal he’d worked out for his salvation had nothing to do with neutrotopes.

“So far, no one has managed to rob the laboratory.  What makes you think we can?”

“It’s got a small staff, mostly scientists and technicians.”  Steelgrave reached for the notescreen lying on the couch and sketched a rapid map.  “The lab, living quarters.  Docking cradles, not restricted.  Supply ships from Kythera City come and go all the time.”

Avon knew that, but wanted to see if the gangster would try to conceal anything.  “Why not?”

“Automated security.”  Hissing through his teeth like a laser knife, Steelgrave slashed a black line between dock and lab.  “Its slightest kiss and your brains splatter to the twelfth sector while what’s left of your balls orbits Arcturis.”

“If you plan to wait until a buyer arrives and they let it down, think again.”  Avon watched him carefully.  “They won’t.  The staff will have microscopic devices implanted under their skin, and will be able to walk through.  They’ll take the neutrotope straight to a ship full of very protective buyers.”

“Yeah, that’s how space pirates have always messed up on Kythera, taking on people when they’re alert, instead of the automatics.”

“Because they know it is stupid to tamper with radiation beams unless you know precisely what you are dealing with.  Interference that weakens one sort of energy can turn another into an inferno.”

A smile twitched Steelgrave’s mouth, secretive, teasing.  “I know.”

Avon watched him intently.  “And?”

“Do you know how your eyes glitter when you talk about death?  You’re even breathing fast.”

Avon straightened.  “Even if that were so, it is irrelevant to the issue at hand.”

The gangster gave him a small, infuriating wink.  Bolts of silver-grey shot through his jumpsuit as he stood.  “You want relevant?  Here’s relevant.  He reached into a hip pocket and offered a small rectangle of plastic film.

Avon took it.  A diagram of the Kythera laboratory like the one Orac had already supplied.  Except for additional lines of computer code in a language so familiar Avon read it as quickly as Earth standard speech.

“You know what those little doo-dads mean?”  Steelgrave sat beside him, looking at the film too.  “I thought you would.”

Avon was all too aware of his body heat, and the faint scent of him, musky and clean.  This information was crucial, and needed his full attention.  Avon forced himself to focus on the code.  “This could change everything.  If there’s a weak point, I can scramble this.”

Steelgrave frowned.  “Not enough to trip the alarms, just enough to let us through?”

“Just enough.”

“How long to reach Kythera’s star system?”

“Twenty-three hours.  We can assume stationery orbit at once, and teleport down at approximately midnight local time.”

“From Liberator?”  The furrows deepened.  “I don’t wanna ring any big alarms.”

_Oh no?  But that is exactly what you do._

“Liberator’s a battle ship.  Big.  Alien.  Conspicuous as hell.  No, Avon.  We go in my ship.  Just a private yacht heading for their city, no big deal.  Nobody cares.  Then make a low hop to the lab.  We look like a local, or at the worst, sightseers.

On the face of it, the plan did make some sense.  But if they could land unhindered, so could others.  The Terra Nostra.  The Federation.

“We use Liberator.  It can move in, teleport us, and be out of range in minutes.  As far as Kythera is concerned, it only came in to verify its course.”

“No.”  The warm ease in the gangster’s voice chilled to ice.  “We don’t.”

Avon looked up from the printout.  Steelgrave met his eyes, determined.  “Liberator can hover on the edge of the star system.  Afterwards, I fly you back into teleport range.”

“Why?”

“My neutrotope never comes aboard Liberator.  Or me, once I’ve got it.”

So that was it?  Merely distrust?  Avon smiled.  “So.  Hiromi, our concern for Blake—you don’t put much faith in that, after all?”

“Sure I do.  It brought you to me.”

Avon felt a smile quirk.  “But neutrotopes—“

“—Are neutrotopes.”  Steelgrave flashed him a grin.

It was refreshing, after the unspoken, nevertheless suffocating loyalty of his crewmates.  With an amoral crook like Steelgrave, there was no danger of failing anyone’s trust.

Of course, an ambush on Kythera and bounty money would be easier than stealing neutrotopes.  But his assessment of Steelgrave did not suggest this man would choose the easy or safe way.  Avon suspected pulling this heist was more to him than a way to get rich.  Perhaps he wanted to prove to himself that he wasn’t beaten.  Perhaps.  It was a very big gamble.  But the stakes were high.  Avon studied his face a final time.  “Agreed,” he answered at last.  “We use your ship.  But I keep my teleport bracelet, and Liberator stays in hailing range.”

“I got no problem with that.”

“Once we breach the radiation web, we’ll need to be quick.  Twenty minutes and the autorepair will close it, strengthening the whole.  There will be no second chance.”

“Only twenty minutes?”  Steelgrave raised his brows and lowered them in a flash of what seemed to serve him for contemplation.  Suddenly he laughed, delighted as a mischievous child.  “Hey Avon, this could be fun.”

Exasperated enough with the man’s mercurial changes to savage him, Avon forced himself to be content with a shrivelling look.

Steelgrave refused to shrivel.  “What—you think I’ve never pulled a job before?”  He was every centimeter the renegade smuggler, professional pride piqued.

Only, he was nothing so simple.  One neutrotope was worth a lot, but not as much as two.  And Steelgrave didn’t strike Avon as a man to be content with a lot.

Not when he could have it all.

±

The field of the yacht’s view screen bloomed with stars, its ninety degree surround lending an illusion of freefloat.  Perhaps it was meant to inspire fantasies about being an astral object oneself, at one with the universe and partaking of its splendor, but isolated in nothingness with a playful killer, euphoria was not an option.  Streamlined though it was, this little craft crawled like a snail in comparison with Liberator.  Seventeen endless hours before Kythera.

“What are you doing?”  Steelgrave’s long nose twitched with inquisitive suspicion.

“Extending the detector range,” Avon lied.

“Liberator’ll pick up anything before we do.”  Steelgrave glanced at Avon’s bracelet.  “You’ll get away, at least.  Or don’t you trust your crew?”

Avon keyed in another sequence.

“Relax.  Nothing’s out there.”

Avon cleared the screen and tried another command.

“Nothing’s out there.”  Steelgrave leaned back in his seat, watching him.  Then a new idea struck him.  “Want some linguine?” he purred seductively.  “Mine’s so good it’ll give you goosebumps.”

Avon turned, too startled to answer.  The word was unfamiliar, but not its root.  _Tongue_.  The same root as _cunnilingus_.

Eyes firing sparks, Steelgrave pursued his advantage.  “What you say?  Try it with me?”

To Avon’s dismay his cock responded with a throb.  “What, precisely, is it?”

“An ancient earth dish invented by my Italian ancestors.  My ship stocks food by some of the best chefs in the galaxy.”

Avon quickly turned back to the control panel and pressed another sequence.

Steelgrave faked surprise.  “What’d you think I meant?”  He tilted his head back, engaging, smug.

Avon pressed a final key, noted the result, and became the aggressor.  “Quite a ship for an independent smuggler.”

“I do pretty well.”

“Not many people know or care anymore what part of old Earth their ancestors came from.”

In a blink, Puck was discarded for a ruthlessness that would do a crimmo credit.  “I told you, I’m an independent.”

Thoroughly enjoying himself now, Avon nodded at the display he had punched up.  Steelgrave leaned over and saw the yacht’s registration information he had decoded.

A flash of fury, dismay quickly concealed.  “So.  You know I stole this ship on New Atlantis.  Congratulations.”

Avon permitted himself a goading smile.  Dangerous, he knew, but it was important the mobster feel himself outwitted and outclassed.  “I suspected you were Sonny Steelgrave when we met.  On Liberator, the computers confirmed it.  In case you’re considering double dealing, I’ve instructed Liberator’s crew to patch through a direct message to Servalan if I'm killed or fall into Federation hands.  I gather she’s looking for you.”

Steelgrave’s eyes were arctic night.  “If you know that much, you know there’s nobody I can trust enough to sell you to.”

“Because you’ve lost your little empire?  I imagine you have more resources than that.  And I imagine you are desperate enough to make this warning necessary.”

His lip lifted viciously.  “I’m no Federation informant.”

“Your former cohorts can’t be sure of that.”

“Until I show ‘em I don’t need to crawl to the Federation, or anyone else.  You think our heist is going to stay secret?  When we step on Kythera’s toes, they’ll screech.  The whole Terra Nostra’s gonna know my new wealth didn’t come from betrayal.”  He showed his teeth.  “And they’ll know to watch their step with me.  I’m not for sucking dry by parasites or liars.”

“Least of all Servalan?”  Avon could sympathize with that.

“Servalan,” Steelgrave separated her name into syllables, mocking each bitterly.  “Slinky, svelte President Servalan.”

Avon felt his smile grow.

“She make your cock go supernova, Avon?  You like wet dreaming about a cobra?”  His voice sizzled with scorn.  “She’s just crud.  Oh, she’ll kill you if she can.  But that’s the worst people like her can do.  They’re too obvious.  Any fool can see they got no heart.”

Interesting, coming from a petty dictator who would no doubt change places with her in an instant.  “I shouldn’t think sentiment is a survival characteristic among your kind.”

“No?”  Steelgrave regarded him grimly.  “You got no heart yourself, do you, Avon?  All brain, the legend goes.  I like that.  The last thing I need is a partner with _heart_.”

He slammed the console with his fist.  Avon jumped.

Then he understood.  Elation filled him at Steelgrave’s revealed vulnerability.  “Like the agent who betrayed you.”

“He’s nothing to me,” Steelgrave spat out.  He stood, flexing his shoulders.  “Heart?  Oh yeah, he had heart.  And brains, and guts.  Just a small time fugitive, but I knew a good thing when I saw it.”  He paced the deck, too vivid for its small space.  “He made himself useful real fast.  Too fast, but I didn’t wanna see it.  I thought it was us, that we were a magic combination, him and me.  I wanted to believe we were invincible together.”  He reached the bulkhead and leaned there, then thumped it with his fist, launching himself into another round of pacing.  “I’ve known liars in my time.  Been one myself, when I have to.  But Vinnie was a galaxy class whore.”  Scathingly he added,  “In every sense of the word.”

Avon watched, concealing his fascinated horror at this exhibition of vulnerability from one who, in his own way, had seemed as armored as himself.  Despite the possible value of the information, he wanted to cut short this onslaught of truth and pain.

“That’s right,” Steelgrave acknowledged bitterly.  “There’s nothing my Vinnie didn’t give me.  I was so fucking proud he was mine, every magnificent centimeter of him, that I gave him everything.  My ass, my trust, my action in a whole star system.  With him by my side there’s nothing I couldn’t have done.  I could’ve controlled it all!”  Reaching the bulkhead again, he whipped around.  “But he blew it all away.  Like the hollow nothingness it was.”  His hands closed on air, twisting as if to wring the emptiness from it.  “He did that to me, and for what?  A citation from Space Command Headquarters?  Some idealistic delusion he’s invented from that propaganda Servalan churns out?  Sooner or later she’ll eat him alive.”

“I shouldn’t think that would bother you.”

“You bet it won’t,” Steelgrave snapped.  “If he crosses my path again, maybe I’ll feed him to her myself.”  He glanced at his chronometer.  “Sixteen hours now.”  Impatiently he continued prowling the deck, his shadow passing over the instruments like a predatory feline’s.

Avon watched it.  Dangerous as he was, the man was finally revealed as a fool.  The stupidest kind of fool.  By his own admission he’d suspected this Vinnie, yet had blinded himself with sentiment.  Avon tried to feel pleased to have Steelgrave’s weakness in his possession, and wondered why he didn’t.

Steelgrave paused, looking at the stars.  “Doesn’t mean shit to you, does it?” he asked conversationally.  “I guess it couldn’t happen to a computer wizard with a mind full of tariel cells and disciplined logic.  Rationally, I knew something about Vinnie was wrong.  If I’d distrusted my instincts, I’d have realized.  But his love felt so real, so intense.  Hnnhh.  Guess it got so intense by feeding on its own guilt and deceit.”  He slumped into his seat.

The stars glistened with wise, sad brightness, like eyes.

Like Anna’s eyes, full of aching tenderness when she asked, “ _Do you trust me?_ ”

Avon rose.  He had to get out.  “I’ll take my turn sleeping.”

_Or, try._

He escaped the deck, conscious of Steelgrave watching startled.

±

Avon woke.  The ship purred on unchanged.  No other sound in the dark.  He was alone in the cabin.  But something had wakened him.  He felt for his weapon.  Its bulk in the holster at his hip reassured him, and the power pack at his other side.  The certainty lingered that something was wrong.  As he withdrew his left hand from the power pack, it felt light.  He gripped his wrist.  His bracelet was gone.

Damning Vila’s pickpocket lessons, he drew his weapon and went stealthily down the corridor.  Music came from the flight deck.  The volume was low, but the beat surged like a freighter’s drive.  Steelgrave occupied the pilot’s chair, a demitasse on the console, his body keeping time.  But at once he turned, alert.

“My bracelet,” Avon snarled, thumb on the trigger.  “I’ll have it back.”

Steelgrave smiled.  Avon was suddenly aware of the phallic shape and angle of his weapon.

“But not now.”  The mobster reached for his espresso cup.  “When we go in, you’ll be in the same fix as me.”

“You seem to doubt I’d use this weapon on you.”

Steelgrave’s eyes flicked down to it.  “Bet you’re real good with your weapon, Avon.  But you’re not teleporting with both neutrotopes, leaving me with some guard’s gun up my ass.”  Calmly he awaited Avon’s decision to shoot or not.  Whatever his reason for stealing the bracelet, it was not fear of death.  He faced that on his own terms.  In this universe, that in itself was a hard-won victory.  Perhaps in any universe.  In grudging respect, Avon holstered his weapon.  “All right.  But if Liberator doesn’t hear from me within ten hours, they will come looking for _you_.

Steelgrave sipped from his espresso and bared his teeth in approval of the its strength.  But his tone was wistful.  “Must feel good, knowing you can depend on them that completely.”

“I depend on their self-preservation.  I am useful to them.”

“Too bad.”  The outlaw’s shoulders twitched in a slight shrug.  “We all know what that’s like, don’t we?”

“We do indeed,” Avon snarled, and prowled back to his cabin for his last few hours’ sleep.  For now, at least, there was no need to watch Steelgrave.

The man already had him exactly where he wanted him.

±

The wreckage of Stygios reeked as he stumbled into the long, dark living quarters.  Burnt bodies lay among the ruins distorted in torment, one of them perhaps Blake’s.  Desperately Avon dug among them with his bare hands, but each corpse he touched was only a brittle metallic shell.  Each looked like Blake until he touched it, but all were hollow.  Nothing remained.

Turning over a remnant like Liberator’s hull, he uncovered a trap door.  Yes.  Here was what he sought.  Not Blake, who had abandoned him, but an escape from this metal tomb.

He lifted the trap door.  The floor fell, casting him into darkness.

He landed on his feet.  Stone walls.  A scent of musk, and jungles.  Chains coiled among straw.  Some captive beast’s lair.  His heart pounded with a foreboding just beyond his comprehension.  Movement in the shadows.

“Vinnie?” he asked uncertainly.

Straw rustled, echoing from the prison wall.  Certain now, Avon emended, “Anna.”

No answer.  But a shadow detached from the rest.  The arch of a haunch, a stride as if to lethal, desperate music, shoulders rippling with power.  Slowly the beast took form, half man, half jaguar.  All deadly predator.  It flexed in a taunting stretch, supple muscles infused with feral strength.  Its dense pelt was almost invisibly spotted, black on sable.  Its fingers flexed, extending curved claws.  A long prehensile tail lashed back and forth.  Avon drew his weapon.  The beast’s rough pink tongue emerged, licking slowly over delicate fangs.  Its slitted eyes gleamed, translucent as amber.  Their gaze was intelligent, merciless, amused.

Avon fired at the beast’s heart.

The jaguar sprang, pinning him to the floor.  Avon jammed the weapon into the dense pelt, but a savage blow knocked it from his grasp, ripping his shirt.  Hissing in pain and fury, Avon clutched at the animal’s throat, but a second slash cut a burning score across his chest.  He cried out, hold loosening.  The jaguar wrenched free and pinned his arms above his head.  Sinuous legs twisted around his.  Avon struggled.  He refused to die like this.

The beast lowered its head.  A rough tongue licked his bared chest.

In horror, he realized what it wanted.

Avon faced it, his rage glittering obsidian shards

The jaguar licked the thin ripple of its upper lip.

If only he had killed it before.  When he killed Anna.  When Blake left him.  When Steelgrave dared him to shoot.

The jaguar flexed its fingers, playfully extending and retracting its claws.

Avon jerked, and found both wrists chained.  He groaned in the knowledge that this was his fault.

A hand flashed out, claw slicing open the leather of his boot.  Avon lunged at it, but the jaguar dodged, in the same fluid movement shredding the other boot from shin to ankle.

Avon snatched an enraged, terrified breath.

The feline gave a rumbling purr, watching the rise and fall of his bare chest.

Avon could not prevent the fast heaving of his panting, nor keep his panic fully hidden.  He raised his knee to protect himself in the only way left to him.

The jaguar pounced, its heavy weight bearing down his legs.  Desperately he tried to throw it off, but felt claws digging gently into his flanks.  He gasped as the rough tongue rasped one of his nipples, then the other.  Not daring to jerk with those claws in him, he willed himself stiff and still against the jaguar, denying it anything.  But he felt the equal stiffness of his cock against its flank.

The claws eased slightly…but only to shred his pants from waist to knee.  Without hope, Avon cried out turned away as far as the claws allowed.  His cock pushed eager and hard against the thin cloth of his briefs.  In answer the jaguar pressed against the naked flesh of his thigh.  From the silky roughness of its fur he felt the moist emergence of its cock.  “No!” he cried, struggling despite the claws.  Smothered in its sleek fur, he hissed in despair at the animal’s feral beauty.  Its cock responded with a pulse, the prickly ridges flaring along a shaft that was human in shape.  He tried to conceal his fear and show only cold rage, but the soft thorns of flesh flared under his gaze.  The creature’s balls stirred faintly in their furred sac.  Avon jabbed a knee at them.  The jaguar twisted, snarling in pain.  It thrust his legs wide apart.

Groaning as the claws sank into his thighs, Avon managed to kick the jaguar hard in the belly, but it growled and bounded back, crushing him with its greater weight.  He hissed futilely, reduced to bestial rage, himself.  The cock showed pink and moist against the dark fur.  The spikes of flesh rose and subsided with his own breaths.  Avon watched in fascinated horror, knowing the jaguar imagined thrusting deep through the armor of his flesh and anger, that it wanted to feel him writhe.  He glared death and plasma bolts at it.

The jaguar only shivered with delight at his rage.

Seeing its lust for his resistance, he willed himself to lie still.  He could not stop it from raping him, but it would get no more from him than his unresponding body.

It regarded him, tail lashing as its anticipation turned to anger.  Avon clenched his teeth, lying utterly still, trying to conserve his energy.  The jaguar stood over him.  The prickles on its cock flaring, it looked with taunting eyes into his.  Hooking a claw casually into his briefs, it ripped, exposing his throbbing cock.

Avon faced the jaguar coldly, showing it his erection meant nothing.  He was ice, impervious.

Brow creasing in a very human frown, the jaguar crouched over him.  Its furred balls and moist cock brushed delicately against his own.

The tail lashed against his thighs.  Its warm tip flicked his balls.  Avon gritted his teeth.  Stroking, cajoling, the prickly tongue licked the length of his cock.  Avon cried out, exploding into frantic struggles.  Almost absently the jaguar reached out, sinking one claw into his nipple to prevent his writhing.  It licked leisurely at his cock, letting him feel the soft and rough textures of its tongue against his shaft, his head, his slit.  Avon groaned in denial of his own pleasure as his cock pulsed against the supple tongue.  Its mouth engulfed him to the root.

“No!” he cried, involuntarily thrusting.  The furnace of its mouth sucked him, tongue curling, lashing, lapping.  Avon shut his lips hard, refusing to voice to the pleasure the jaguar inflicted upon him, refusing to let it know it had any effect upon him beyond the meaningless responses of muscle and tissue.  Its cock pressed between his thighs.  Its tail seethed across them in a snaky caress.  Avon’s flesh rose in goosebumps.  He pressed hard against the floor, refusing to seek the touches.  The jaguar sucked him ferociously, pressing his cock against the roof of its mouth, the smooth, hard backs of its fangs.  Avon gasped at the merciless yearning of his own body.  Slowly the jaguar drew back, sharp teeth scraping the length of his shaft.  Its rough tongue circled the tender head.

Avon arched, screaming as he began to come.  The jaguar took him in deeply as his body made a taut crescent in the air.  He came into the beast’s mouth in violent, shuddering heaves, keening in despairing ecstasy.  Claws digging into him, it drank from his cock as his body gradually stilled and his cry sank to a soft, continuous wail of resistance.

His enemy purred with satisfaction.

Avon shuddered.

It lifted its head, regarding him with its Steelgrave eyes, dark and glowing.

Avon defied it with all the force of his own darkness.  Seeing it had not quite conquered him, it growled softly.  Reaching between his legs, its tail stroked the curve of his buttocks.

Avon hissed in rage.  It had already brutalized him beyond the rape it contemplated, and those knowing, betrayed eyes needed more than mere rape.  Their pride, their hunger, their isolation so like his own, made his heart thunder with new terror.  He could not share those.  Not with Cally, not even with Blake.  To Steelgrave, he dared not even reveal their existence.

Having no other weapon, he bit savagely into the jaguar’s throat, and felt triumph at the taste of blood.  But his head was jerked back.  Eyes glittering in fury, the jaguar closed its claws around his own throat.

“Go ahead.”  Avon dared it coldly, hoping it would slash and have done with it.

The jaguar licked his throat.  Avon shivered, trying not to.  He was overpowered.  His futile struggles only inflamed the beast.  But he feared what might happen if he failed to resist.  Not what the jaguar would do to him, but his own craving.  He bared his teeth.

Its eyes, now feline amber, looked at him with wise, human sadness.  Its claws left his throat to trace across his face, not cutting this time, in a caress.  Avon’s balls drew up in response.  He glared, desperately trying to disguise it.

The cat purred.  Its tail tip played with his balls.

Avon gave a choked sob at the sharp conflict within him.  Involuntarily he arched, exposing himself more.  The tail tip stroked his cock.  The eyes’ mocking sadness persisted.  Avon shut his eyes, not letting the jaguar see what was there.

Holding his head immobile, the animal licked his face.  Its tail curled around his cock, stroking, the soft fur caressing his skin.  He fought not to move, breaths coming ragged with his effort, but he thrust.

Like a dark snake the tail tightened its grip.

He cried aloud in protest as his cock swelled thick and heavy.

The jaguar turned him over.  Straddling him, it pinned him down.  Avon clenched tight as it slid down his legs.  A sinuous tongue licked the cleft of his buttocks.  Avon clenched hard, making himself iron.  Dolomite.  Herculaneum.  A claw settled on each mound, applying delicate pressure.  The threat was clear.  Unless he relaxed, they would sink in.

Avon did not relax.

But he knew it was only a matter of time, and pain.  Flesh was not stone.

He did not care.  He could not give the beast what it wanted.

  
The jaguar’s talons pierced his cheeks fractionally.  Its tongue tip wormed between.   Cursing, Avon jerked away, then bit his lip at the pain.  The jaguar forced his cleft wider, until he felt its hot breath against his exposed anus.  Its tongue probed, a supple, velvety dagger.  He cried out in an ecstasy of denial, feeling the tender skin of his opening pulsate against it.  The jaguar pulled back, watching him quiver.  Its tail glided up the backs of his thighs.  The tip rubbed softly at his center.  Avon choked out an incoherent threat, feeling himself ripple like a sea anemone.  The jaguar’s cock emerged, thorns of flesh undulating against him.

“No!” he protested.

The jaguar let him feel its claws, opening him further.  Avon squirmed to escape the inevitable, but only felt his helplessness.  The jaguar’s tail tip slid down, seeking his balls, wiggling between his thighs as it teased him.  His cock ached, rigid.  He was glad the jaguar couldn’t see it.  He fought not to make a sound, though the pleasure of the tail’s teasing was unbearable..  The head of the jaguar’s cock pushed against his undefended entrance.  The tail  forced its way beneath his body, finding his inflamed cock.  He moaned, hating the beast for robbing every one of his secrets.  As the spikes of flesh flared against him he pressed to the floor in dread.

A quick jab thrust him apart, stabbing into his last bastion.  Avon screamed.

The jaguar waited, letting the fire thread through each nerve.  The tail flicked restlessly against the taut length of his cock.

Another thrust, deep into him.

Avon heard his incoherent denials, delirious as a fever victim’s.  With a growl, the jaguar plunged again, cock spikes bristling.  Avon burst into wild struggles, his screams ringing against the walls.  His passage gripped his enemy’s cock in denial and greed.  The jaguar drew back slowly, each barb stroking his sensitized channel with fire.  Provoked by his feverish moans, it split him again with its spiked shaft.  He writhed, exhausted and sweating.  Though his struggles only impaled him further, he was tormented beyond bearing.  He drove himself away, rammed himself onto the jaguar in demented rapture.  The cat thrust with slow, furious, possessive savagery.  The barbs pulsed wildly, and it gave a snarling cry of triumph.  Avon opened utterly to the fury of his foe’s desire.  He growled as if he were the beast.  His core ignited as the jaguar’s seed fired through him, as alive and seething as its cock.  With a ragged, shattered cry he jolted in an orgasm fiercer than the first.  The claws tightened on him.  He heard the satisfied snarl as a last spasm torqued him and he squeezed his enemy’s cock dry.

The jaguar slid slowly out of him, each thorn separately stroking him.  He shuddered with a long, low moan, too exhausted to fight the new onslaught of sensation.  The jaguar leaned over him, biting his shoulder gently.  Wistfully.

With a graceful bound it merged with the shadows.

±

Sonny Steelgrave yawned as he prowled onto the deck.  “Half an hour to Kythera?”  He drew his gun, checked it, and holstered it.  “Mmm, let’s do it!”

Anger roiled to the surface.  “Sleeping before I woke was careless, Steelgrave.”

“Why?  We’re in neutral space.  Anything comes in range, the alarm sounds.  Anything probes us, it’s recorded.  There’s a difference between caution and paranoia, Avon.”  Steelgrave began doing warm-up moves, flexing each muscle with easy, sensuous grace.

Avon looked away.  “You, of course, are the expert.  That’s why you are still king of New Atlantis.”

He felt, rather than saw, the other man bristle.

That was gratifying.

“Yeah well,” the gangster said with quiet venom.  “You got my number, but maybe I got yours.  I’m surprised that recording of Hiromi’s distress call brought you at all.  Cally, Vila, even Tarrant and Dayna who’d never met Blake, each in their own way showed loyalty.  On Liberator, each one tried to find out if I really didn’t know where Blake is, or if he’s alive.  Each one but you.  With you, the questions were always about the neutrotopes.  Good thing I had that bait to offer you.  Hiromi might have been enough for the others.  I respect them for that, and Blake for earning that loyalty.  The way you treat them, I wonder if you can count on the same.”

“Not that it’s any of your business, but I don’t.  For a man who’s been betrayed as thoroughly as you have, you seem determined not to grasp the obvious.  Betrayal isn’t a matter of _if_ , but _when_.”

“Yeah, right,” Steelgrave’s light-husky voice slashed like a knife.

“Continue to deny it, and you will continue to be betrayed.”

“Better betrayed then dishonored.”

Avon didn’t even ask what that was supposed to mean.  He didn’t care.

“I didn’t plan to take your bracelet.  But when not one word came out of your mouth about Blake, but your eyes glittered every time I said ‘neutrotope’, I figured it was a smart move.  You’ve had your doubts about me all along.  That’s only natural.  But don’t make any mistakes with me, Avon.  I may be alone in this world, but I want my life, and I want that neutrotope.  You’re not taking either of them from me.”

Avon turned to face a desperation as fierce, a defiance as absolute, as his own.

±

Avon opened the hatch.  The landing pad stretched for a short distance, flat, silver-grey, empty.  Beyond, a multiple domed structure of the same muted silver loomed low against a black sky glistening with stars.  The Kytheran night had an odd depth.  Or maybe it only seemed that way with the high intensity web pulsating against it.  Steelgrave stepped out behind him, eyes snapping wide at the arcs of ultramarine, crimson and deep violet that throbbed like beaded threads across the night.  “Man!” he whispered, “That’s some light show.”  The silence swallowed his voice like a black hole.  No sounds of nocturnal creatures, no hum of machinery from the domes, no breeze.  Eerie.  Steelgrave’s informant was reliable—or it was a trap.

Steelgrave’s gaze darted along the perimeter of the facility, then returned to the luminous pulsations.  “That’s too beautiful not to be deadly.  I hope you know what you’re doing.”

Avon smiled.  Deadly was an understatement.  But what seemed random at first was an interplay of frequencies specified intervals.  Their meshing gave the web its impermeability.  Knock out one ray, and all those interlocking with it would falter.  He only needed one weak spot.  “We’ll have to go closer.”

Steelgrave nodded.

The silence devoured their steps as they crossed the black sand, Steelgrave on the lookout while Avon studied the web.  As they approached it, the domes’ peculiar lowness was explained.  The facility stood in a huge pit, probably to help insulate the neutrotopes before they were sealed.  What had seemed a low surrounding wall was actually a parapet.  On its inner side it dropped to the sunken ground where the domes stood.  These corresponded to Steelgrave’s plan, with large production dome in the center.

Steelgrave flexed his shoulders as if hoping some guard would appear for him to blast away.  “Whatcha looking for?”

Little danger in telling him.  It still took expertise to get in.  “An inconsistency in the pattern of the lights.”  Avon tapped one of the rhythms he had discerned on the hilt of his weapon and lifted a brow at the mobster.  Tracking each was difficult, and following them all, complex indeed.

Steelgrave nodded and watched the beams, his body rippling to the intricate rhythms as if they were a quirky, syncopated dance.  Avon tried not to think of the jaguar’s seductive undulations, and instead made rational use of Steelgrave’s unforeseen talent.  “You find the inconsistency.  I’ll watch for guards.”  They moved on.  Avon scanned the low perimeter wall for human movement, the outline of any shape against its dull silver, then turned to the landing pad and the shadows beyond its illumination.

Steelgrave touched his arm, and pointed.

“See something?”

“Da-da dada daaaa.”

“Where?  I don’t see it.”

Steelgrave gripped him as if he were dreadfully obtuse, making him feel the rhythm.  “Dada Daaaa!”

He was right.  A subtle pause in one crimson beam.  Avon narrowed his eyes, nodding out the beat with him.  “I suggest you stay back.  If I slip up, you don’t want to be within ten meters.”

“If you don’t slip up, I wanna make sure I get in, too.”

“Have it your own way.  If I succeed, we have twenty minutes.”  The pulsing sparks throbbed in the air, their energy like deft fingers on the skin.  While Steelgrave kept watch, Avon took his laser probe from the small bag strapped across his shoulder.  Steelgrave had an identical bag, one for each neutrotope.  By the illumination of the oscillating colors Avon carefully set the instrument, then waited for the pause in the crimson beam.  It came, mere centimeters from the lethal crossing of blue and violet.  Bracing his arm and holding his breath for steadiness, he activated the laser.  It passed precisely through the crimson.  Wild energies played an arpeggio over his flesh.

A hole gaped in the web.  Avon stooped through, Steelgrave close behind.  Beyond the wall was a drop of some nine feet to a catwalk circling its inner parameter, broken only by a metal and glass lift from the level of the domes to the top.  The courtyard was empty.  Presumably the day shift of scientists and production technicians were sleeping.  “Better not risk the elevator,” Steelgrave said quietly.  “The night maintenance crew might be monitoring it.” 

Avon nodded.  They could probably override it and trap them, too.  Better to chance the metal ladders descending at intervals from the catwalk.  From here to the catwalk, the only way was to jump.  Getting down would be no problem.  He only hoped making the leap from below would be as easy.  Though they had brought rope, there was nowhere to secure it.

Steelgrave jumped first.  Avon landed beside him, then the gangster covered him while he descended the nearest rungs, and vice versa.  Speed was too essential for subtlety.  As soon as Steelgrave’s foot touched ground, Avon broke into a run.  No sign of sound of alarms as they made it to the main dome..  Avon touched the control, and the door slid open.  An empty corridor.  The quiet hum of machinery deep within. According to Orac, this part of the dome was open to anyone with the clearance to get inside the facility.  The section where the neutrotopes were stored was a different story—but that was why Steelgrave needed him.  According to Orac’s the plan, he could gain computer access at any work station along the south corridor.  They found that corridor quickly, but its doors were all shut.

Steelgrave started forward.  “Those locks should blow easy.”

Avon gripped his arm.  “Which would set off every alarm in the facility.”

Steelgrave’s eyebrows arched dangerously.  “We don’t have much time.”

Avon knew that, but under one door a strip of light showed.  Steelgrave spotted it before he pointed it out, and prowled toward it.  The door began moving.  Steelgrave propelled himself back around the corner.  The hiss of the door, steps heading away.  When they peered around the corner, the door stood open.  "Luck’s on our side,” Steelgrave gave an exultant grin, as if that were to his credit, and darted in, taking up position near the door while Avon went to the computer.  Avon no longer worried that easy living on New Atlantis had blunted Steelgrave’s edge.  The man was honed sharper than his name.  He had no qualms about putting down his weapon to use the computer.  At least, not until Steelgrave had what he wanted.  The security program was familiar, and took less than a minute to modify.  Still, time was getting short.  “Hurry,” Avon urged, heading for the storage section.

It wasn’t far.  When Steelgrave saw the door gaping open he gave Avon a glance of acknowledgement.  Within, the lights were low and the temperature cooler.  The storage vault’s door also stood wide.  Steelgrave flicked on the light, revealing a bank of padded cradles, two occupied by the glistening tubes of neutrotopes.  But the bank stood behind glass.

“What—what?”  Steelgrave fumed at the hair-fine wires crisscrossing the glass.

“What it looks like,” Avon heard tension harshen his voice.  “A mechanical alarm.  No connection to the computer system.”

“You mean you can’t take care of it?”  The whites flashed around Steelgrave’s pupils as he advanced aggressively.  “You’re supposed to be the expert.”

“I can take care of it.”  Avon fired at the glass.  Steelgrave threw his arm over his eyes as it shattered, but was through the jagged gap before the alarms began ringing.

The klaxons blared as they shoved the neutrotopes into their bags and ran.  In the corridor a man in a white coat blocked their way.  He raised a gun, but Steelgrave hurled him hard against the wall, not wasting the time to shoot.  As they gained the main corridor, running boots and shouted orders echoed behind.  The door was still open.  Steelgrave glanced outside.  “Guards on your right.  Go!”

Avon paused only long enough to fuse the door closed with a blast, but even that put him behind.  The gangster was already scrambling up ladder, gunfire streaking bright around him.  The air sizzled with energy discharges as he sped.  But the guards were few, and distant.  The Kytherans based their whole economy on their redoubtable technology, and as he and Steelgrave had gambled, they put too much faith in it.  Avon flung himself at the ladder.  When he was halfway up, the gunfire ceased.  He smiled.  He was too close to the radiation web now.  A shot from below could blow the whole factory off the face of the planet.

Steelgrave waited on the catwalk, twitching with impatience.  “C’mon!  The fuckin’ hole’s knitting up!”

Even as Avon looked, the beads of light drew closer together.

“I tried to make the jump with this.  I can’t.”  Steelgrave shoved the leather bag containing the neutrotope at Avon.  “Don’t doublecross me,” he warned between gritted teeth.

Avon didn’t bother to answer.  Someone had managed to override the sabotage he had programmed into the lift.  It was moving down toward the guards and armed staff gathered below.

Steelgrave leaped, clawing the top of the wall, but his grip slipped and he hit the catwalk with a grunt.  Fingers bleeding, face vivid with the flame of his will, he sprang harder, caught the edge and catapulted to the top.

Their pursuers rushed to fill the lift.  Once it gained the catwalk, the web would no longer be in their line of fire.  And they would be too close to miss.

Avon tossed Steelgrave’s bag up to him, then his own.  Crouching, he saw Steelgrave rush through the closing rift.  He launched himself with all his strength, and made the edge. Gripping its roughness, he lifted himself.  Ice seared his leg.  He cried out, slipping.

Despite the dizzy pain he clutched, managing to save himself from falling, but swung there, unable to muster the force to pull himself up.  The lift reached the catwalk.  Above, Steelgrave paused.  He glanced back, but the web was closing too fast.  There was no chance.  “Too late,” Avon gasped.  “Don’t try it!  Run!”

Steelgrave darted through the shrinking hole.  Seizing Avon’s wrists he hauled him up.  Then Avon felt the edge under his elbows, and could help.  Luminous beads darted around him, burning as Steelgrave dragged him through the vanishing hole.

“Can you make it?”

Avon set his teeth and forced on.  His numb leg obeyed his will.  The landing pad glimmered silver-grey, the yacht shining pale against the stars.  The nausea lessened as they reached the pad, but in his peripheral vision Avon saw the lift disgorge its occupants.  Salvos shattered around them.  Steelgrave reached the ship, but as he opened the hatch a guard who had outdistanced the rest took aim at him.  Avon fired, and she fell.  He leapt into the yacht behind Steelgrave.

“Hit it!”  Steelgrave shouted.

Avon jabbed the hatch control and took the flight position.  It was not what they had agreed on, but he was the better pilot.  The other man took the navigator’s seat without protest and read off their status.  Avon rapidly confirmed their course, and fired the drives.  Rumbling with the strain of an acceleration it was not built for, the yacht lifted.

“I’m running the evasion course I plotted,” Avon said.  “Keep your eyes open for pursuit.”

“I don’t have to.  They’re up there waiting for us.  Robot missiles.  Those Kytherans do love their technology.”

Avon disengaged the computerized course.  Those missiles would analyze it.  “Contact Liberator.  But they can’t reach us for at least an hour.”

“And Kythera will be ready for them.  What—you think I got no fire power in this thing?”

Avon only hoped so.  “Hang on,” he said, swinging into a tricky manual maneuver Jenna had once taught him.

“Want your teleport bracelet?”

“No.”

Steelgrave winked.

Laughing with quiet exhilaration, Avon gave his full attention to the controls.  Whichever way they turned, the interceptors soon homed in, hurling raw plasma that seared the view screen white and made the interior of the yacht sizzle with electricity.  Steelgrave urged them on mockingly, shouting with exultant braggadocio whenever he blew one up.  Spinning, they plunged into the cloud of charged gaseous matter.  Petals of static flame filled the screen, blooming deep rose shot with veins of cobalt.  The seekers sped by, unable to detect their change of course in the interference.

±

“We’d better lay low for awhile,” Avon said.  “Those missiles are sophisticated enough to turn back and come looking for us, but they won’t detect us here.”

Steelgrave stood, breathing fast, eyes sparking feral lights.  “We did it.  You and me, Avon.”  He took the leather bags with the neutrotopes and handed Avon his.  “I swore I’d never trust a right hand again, but you and me, we could build something together.”

Once, such an astute partner in crime would have been enough reason to abandon Liberator.  As long as Steelgrave survived, he would be indomitable, and he had as much chance of surviving as they had.  The Terra Nostra was not the thorn in Servalan’s side that the Resistance was.  Steelgrave could make a deal with her.

But not as the cohort of Kerr Avon.

“Yes,” Avon agreed, “we could have.”

Understanding what he meant, Steelgrave nodded.  “Too bad.”

Avon regarded him with curiosity.  “You could have had both neutrotopes.”

“Maybe I would’ve, if you hadn’t put my life before greed.  Even before your own.”

“That is not the way it was.  I thought it was too late for me.  A second, pointless death seemed irrational.”

“Logic or instinct, it all adds up to the same thing.  I respect what you did.”

“We all do atypical things under stress.”

“I don’t think it was atypical.”

“Perhaps I had some quaint notion if you lived you might take Hiromi to Liberator.”

Steelgrave smiled as if that confirmed something.  He leaned over his control panel and adjusted the temperature control, then shrugged slightly.  “I might’ve kept both neutrotopes, but I’d give your crew Hiromi.”

Avon tried to fight the pleasure he took in the man’s respect, but the notion grew that here, at long last, was an equal in more than crime.  A counterpart in loneliness, in the need, against all odds, to trust.  A man even, perhaps, worthy of trusting.  Emptiness gaped suddenly.  He rose and stepped away from the magnet of the man’s nearness.

Steelgrave turned away too.  He squared his shoulders.  “Yeah.  Well, if we can’t rendezvous with Liberator yet, I’m gonna catch a rest.”  He strode from the deck.

Avon made no conscious decision to follow.  He was merely there, pressing the control before the cabin door had quite closed, stepping in as Steelgrave turned.  When he saw welcome flare in those volatile eyes he grasped Steelgrave by the shoulders, mouth greedily seeking the gangster’s.  The strong, agile body pressed against his, chest, thighs, hips, importunate jerk of a hardening cock.  Voracious lips nibbled at his, pushing through to his tongue.  Teeth closed on it, and Steelgrave sucked.

It was like holding a swarm of famished piranha.  Avon tried to be amused, but the need he had unleashed in the man touched him with remorse and eagerness.  He lashed the avid tongue, not gentle but treasuring.  Steelgrave ran deft hands up and down his back, responding to each nuance of his musculature with little grunts and quick massaging rubs.

“I dreamed you were a jaguar,” Avon waited for him to ask more, knowing he would not tell, but Steelgrave only squeezed him, uttering a soft, pleased _mmmphf_.

Both men gasped at the sudden response of Avon’s cock against Steelgrave’s hip.  This was too powerful to be safe, yet instead of pulling away Avon took the impudent thrust of Steelgrave’s lower lip between both of his, and bit.  Steelgrave retaliated by kneading his buttocks.  Perhaps he was trying to establish a pecking order, but who did what to whom was unimportant to Avon.  He released Steelgrave’s lip to capture his tongue.

The kneading relaxed to a prolonged, almost delicate sensuality, and Avon interrogated the captive tongue with merciless thoroughness, winding round it, searching it, imprisoning it in his mouth so that it could not escape.  In perhaps perilous curiosity, he slid his own hands down.  Shaping his palms to the two taut rounds, he could not resist separating them.  Steelgrave teased his tongue away.  The dark eyes glinted.  “You wanna stick it in me, Avon?  Huh?  That what you want?”

Avon’s cock went rigid in answer.

“Oooo, I felt that.”  His fingers pressed deeper into the muscles they gripped.

Like claws.

Avon gasped.

Steelgrave’s quiet, husky laugh sent a shiver through him. “You don’t want that?   That’s not enough?  What do you want?”

_The safety of desiring an absent Blake in isolation._

Steelgrave pulled off his belt, tossed it aside.  His small, nimble hands found the zipper of the jumpsuit.  Avon caught his wrists.

Steelgrave’s eyebrows did an irritated dance.  “What, you wanna play games?”  He glanced at the leather belt on the floor.  “Maybe I should’ve kept that.”

 “Maybe you should have.”  Avon could not help smiling, though he knew it made his words a dare.

Steelgrave’s eyes narrowed.  He tilted his head, considering.  Without warning he twisted hard, freeing his wrists, and jerked down Avon’s zipper.  Avon caught his breath as his cock leaped against his briefs.  Steelgrave reached to seize it—but then gave a taunting smile, and rubbed it slowly through the thin black cloth.  “You like it rough?” his voice was a caress almost as sensual.  “Cause I can go either way—for you.”  He circled the head of Avon’s cock with a knowing finger, looking into his eyes in acknowledgement.  “Rough hurts less, sometimes.”

Avon shuddered, not wanting to talk about that.

“Oh yeah, look at you.  Cool Alpha, all arrogance and expertise.  I bet you’re real good at dangerous games.  I bet they make you so hot the come shoots like plasma bolts from here…” his thumb pressed the slit though the cloth, making Avon gasp.

Steelgrave let him go.  The picture of nonchalance, he unzipped his own jacket, unfastened his shirt and tossed them on the foot of the bunk.  His powerful shoulders surged to muscular arms.  His chest was lightly patterned with sable hair, his nipples dusky with a hint of rose.  Seeing Avon watching, he paused and pursed his lips in an insolent little invitation.  Avon snarled at him.  Steelgrave made a small, gratified noise.  He unzipped and stripped away his trousers with an odd little flourish, leaving only a pair of very scant red briefs.  His hips were trim, his thighs and calves more slender than expected, but well shaped and taut.

Then Avon saw the knife he had taken from his pocket.

He laughed softly as Avon tensed.  “I’m gonna cut that little bit of cloth off you, Avon.”

Wondering what the hell he had got himself into, Avon gave him a warning look.  But his cock played the traitor, bulging harder against the thin cloth.

“Ooo.”  Steelgrave smiled wickedly.  He caught the light on the bright steel of the knife, showing off the honed edge.  Avon took a quick breath as the gangster stroked its flat side up his thigh.  The chill metal slid between cloth and skin, next to his cock.  Steelgrave looked into his eyes.  Avon refused to flinch.  Steelgrave jerked the blade like a talon.

Avon’s cock sprang free.  “Look what I found,” Steelgrave purred.  “Look how beautiful you are.”  He caressed the shaft of Avon’s cock with the blade, cool metal against hot throbbing.  He followed the branching of a vein toward the head.  Despite himself Avon moaned.  Steelgrave crouched and licked the length of his cock.  Choking back a cry, Avon gripping his shoulders, shivering at the cold steel, the hot tongue.  Steelgrave closed his mouth over both cock and blade.

Avon bit back the sound that rose in his throat, not daring to thrust, but Steelgrave glanced up.  Whatever he saw in Avon’s eyes made him moan, his scarred, impertinent, shrewd face suddenly beautiful in its openness, as if a soft light glowed within.  That should have seemed incongruous, but did not.  Steelgrave turned the knife, pressing its sharp edge delicately against the shaft of Avon’s cock.  He slithered the velvet wetness of his tongue beside it.  Avon held in a moan, stroking his hair.

Steelgrave’s mouth slid off of him.  Lightly menacing, the blade skimmed his balls.  “One quick cut—and _gone_.  Tell me Avon, does that scare you more, or does getting close?”

Avon tightened his fingers in Steelgrave’s hair, warning him.

“I’ll accept that answer.  After all…” the edge stroked the root of his balls “…Maybe you can’t admit it, but I’ve got you right where you want me.”  The tip of the knife pricked his balls delicately as the voracious mouth drenched his cock.

Avon hissed, trembling.

Steelgrave released him slowly.  The knife point traced a bloodless line up his torso to his nipple.  “Lie down.”

The gangster was watching his eyes for his response, not paying enough attention to his hands, or the knife.  He could have it in a moment, and turn the tables.  Instead he backed away from the blade, turned and lay on the bunk.  Its thermal spread crinkled under his bare back and buttocks.

Quick as lightning Steelgrave straddled him.  Avon arched, dragged up by sharp need.  A small, eager sound escaped him.

“Yeah,” Steelgrave whispered.  “I think you want more.  But I wonder if I feel like giving it to you.”  He frowned with smug satisfaction, savoring his control.

Anger pierced the deadly-sweet darkness of desire.  Avon jerked Steelgrave’s briefs down, exposing dark, curling hair and a cock insolently large and heavy for the man’s size.  The large, flushed head looked tender, as if he would come at a touch.  His balls were full and round.

In answer, Steelgrave caught Avon’s aching cock.  “Can you make a noise without choking on it  Can you say you want me?”

Avon felt the words dragged from his vitals.  “I want you.”  Blake be damned, it was true.  “Oh yes, Steelgrave, I do want you.”  He shuddered in fevered anticipation as Steelgrave rummaged a tube from the bedside stand.  Looking into Avon’s eyes he squeezed and stroked the slickness over Avon’s cock, then guided him into position.  The hot, puckered opening pulsed against his cock head, offering itself.  Avon thrust.  He felt Steelgrave press the point of the knife to his nipple as the small opening slowly yielded to him.  Moaning at both sensations, he withdrew, then shoved hard into the hot, tight canal.

“Fuck me, fuck me hard,” Steelgrave caressed him with his murmur, punctuating it with a squeeze of his passage and a little jab of the knife.

With a snarl Avon stabbed the man with his cock.

“Yeah, like that…see if you can drive me crazy…crazy…”  Steelgrave cut a fine line around the edge of his nipple.  Breathing raggedly with mingled pain and pleasure, Avon rammed into the tight heat of the man’s core, the faster and fiercer the deeper he plunged.  Steelgrave growled and cursed, biting his throat as he impaled himself harder on the pillaging cock.  Avon caught him in his arms, the wildfire of the man rushing in fierce, erratic surges through his nerves.  Holding Steelgrave’s writhing body still, he plunged into the flame with a cry.  Steelgrave’s hoarse voice blended with his.  Biting him with knife and teeth, Steelgrave contracted around him, gripping him fiercely as he came in mad, surging pulses.  All the universe was lost in annihilating, glowing awareness of this man, no one but him.

The knife clattered to the floor.  Strong hands pulled him closer, and kisses devoured him.  Avon returned them, shaken to the bone by the tenderness that filled him for this near-stranger.

“Think I’ll steal you away from Liberator, Avon,” Steelgrave murmured, stroking him.  “Think I’ll lock you up safe and sound with the neutrotope, and keep you just for me.  Mine.  All _mine_.”

Avon traced the fine, aggressive line of Steelgrave’s cheek and jaw with a fingertip.  “You can try.”

Steelgrave rubbed like a pleased jaguar, burying his face in Avon’s shoulder.  “Mmmhh,” he answered ambiguously.  He thrust his hips, bringing Avon back to awareness of his hardness.

“That demand I can do something about,” Avon whispered.

Steelgrave’s eyes were a dark mirror, their fierce hunger frightening to contemplate.  In their urgency Avon saw how rare it was for him to give himself first.  Perhaps he had never done so without taking beforehand.  Avon arched, offering the small wounds the man had made.  Steelgrave clicked his tongue in teasing, tender regret.  He molded his body closer, an arm going under Avon to arch him further as his tongue circled the stinging nipple.  The other arm went under him too, hand seeking.

Avon clenched, letting him feel his tautness.  Slowly, deliberately, he rubbed himself along the length of Steelgrave, stroking the man’s cock with his body.  A shudder went through him.

Steelgrave made a small, greedy sound.  Kneading the muscle in his grip, he licked a wet line to the other nipple, teasing it with delicate licks that belied his desperation.  Avon felt his own pulse quicken with desire or fear, and again with the dismay of not knowing which was which.

Steelgrave lifted him into a higher arch.  He ground his cock slowly against Avon’s thighs as if trying to disguise his tension.  “You like my cock, Avon?”

“Probably.”

Steelgrave bit his nipple hard.

Avon gasped and raised himself, rubbing Steelgrave with lingering, purposeful abandon.

“Oooo…I love how you move.”

Giving way to his mingled arousal and terror, Avon roiled in his grasp like a sinuous snake.

Steelgrave twisted like a wrestler, grasping Avon’s legs and pressing them back over his head.  Avon fought against the exposed, vulnerable position, but Steelgrave held him there.  The dark wells of his eyes pleaded.

A long shudder shook Avon to the core.  He opened himself further.

Steelgrave moaned.  His balls brushed Avon’s opening as he leaned forward for the tube.  His slicked finger strummed across Avon’s opening, preparing it.  Avon contracted involuntarily.

“I want you, Avon.”

He did not mean the opening he stroked.  Nor his earlier teasing about locking away and keeping.  To be an unwilling captive would be easy, compared with the nameless, searching thing this man was asking of him.

The tube landed beside the knife and Steelgrave plunged his finger deep into him.  Avon accepted the invasion, gritting his teeth against the pain.  He had offered it to Blake.  He did not want such vulnerability again.

“No, I _want_ you.”

“Take what you want,” Avon whispered a gaming challenge in growing alarm.

“No.  Give it to me.”  Steelgrave stroked the head of his cock against the sensitized spot.  “How?” Avon asked, heart ripped open for the need in the man, and his inability to fill it.

Steelgrave pressed into him with excruciating slowness, splitting him centimeter by centimeter.  Avon cried out.  His center gripped the cleaving thickness like a vise.  Despite himself he clasped the man with his legs, urging him deeper.

Steelgrave circled slowly within him.  “Oh, Avon…like that.  Just like that.”

Trembling on the rim of an abyss, Avon held himself open to him.

“Like when you killed the guard who would’ve shot me.  Like when you let me hold that knife to you.  …Like when you trust me.”

 _I trust no one,_ Avon wanted to retort.  But for this moment, it was not true.

Steelgrave held his gaze, burning.

A yet more violent shudder passed through Avon as he knew that this terrifying need was not only Steelgrave’s.

Steelgrave saw his admission, and moaned.  Hoarsely he whispered, “I got somethin’ what you want?”

Avon could not voice that answer.  Steelgrave knew it, anyway.  He drove in hard, and again, shivering as Avon writhed open and tormented beneath him.  Avon  thrust onto him, took the blunt, stabbing hardness deep, then withdrew to the edge.  Steelgrave panted aloud, forehead streaked with sweat.  The lids came down over his lustrous eyes.

Avon tilted his hips.  “More,” he pleaded.  A ripple went through Steelgrave.  He slammed in again and again in a mounting fury of craving and attainment.  Avon gripped him, welcoming the devastating pleasure, the freedom of heedless flight utterly joined with another.  He writhed on Steelgrave’s hard fragility, greedy for more, for the man’s very soul.  Steelgrave’s face was pure energy, unconfined by the lightly scarred skin, the tightening smoothness of his closed eyelids.  “Oh Avon…oh God, Vinnie—”

His eyes snapped open.  Realization.  Agony of loss.  The sharp, quick widening of a different pain and remorse.

“I know,” Avon whispered, throat tight.

“This is between you and me,” Steelgrave whispered fiercely.  “I don’t want him here.”  He stroked deep into Avon with his cock.

“He may always be.”  Avon forced himself to finish the truth, “As Blake is for me.”

Steelgrave looked at him, eyes luminous with tears he could no more shed than Avon could his own.  “Avon,” he moaned, gathering him close and driving with desperate abandon into him.  Avon gripped him tight in pain that erupted into a conflagration of exquisite, annihilating pleasure, an unbearably sharp, tender brightness that burst into a soft glow, as primordial as star matter, as ancient in its newness as the shuddering jolts of Steelgrave’s orgasm, each spasm of release accompanied by his moaned name.  His, no one else’s.

±

Energy wavered in the teleport.  It coalesced into Steelgrave supporting a small woman.  Her left leg was encased in a bulky regeneration cast.  Their forms solidified, revealing Hiromi’s straight black hair, curved nose and blunt chin.  Steelgrave carried her to the couch and put her carefully down.

“It’s good to see you, Hiromi,” Cally said warmly.  “Are you all right?”

“I am now.”  Hiromi smiled at her.

“Mahoney take good care of you?” Steelgrave asked?

“Yes, thank you,” the resistance fighter answered more guardedly.

“What happened on Stygios?” Tarrant asked the obvious rather than the crucial, as usual.

Hiromi hesitated.

“I’ll be in my cabin.”  Steelgrave made himself scarce.

“That pirate,” Hiromi said as soon as he was gone, “he landed after the attack and found my distress call.  Has he used it to compromise you in any way?”

The word had another, more archaic meaning, Avon recalled, but remained expressionless.  “We made a deal to our mutual benefit.”

“If he keeps his word and the Federation don’t sneak up behind us,” Vila put in.

For once, Avon saw no advantage in telling Vila what a fool he was.

“It’s our own fault the Federation found the base.  Too much traffic for an uninhabited planet.  Now it’s all gone, and the others who stayed behind with me to load the equipment are dead.”

“Was Blake one?” Avon asked.

“He got away.”

Avon hid his relief, but Cally caught his eye and smiled at him, then at Vila.

“Blake organized the evacuation.  He promised to stick with our people until he them to Lindor.”

“And then?”

“We didn’t ask.  The fewer who know where he is, the safer for him.”

“Was he all right?” Cally asked.

“I didn’t know him.  Not really.  He was with us for a few months, but he never talked about himself.”  Hiromi frowned.  “But he seemed different from before.  Not hopeful anymore, just driven.  I hope you find him.  He never admitted it, but I think he needs you.”

“It is difficult to find someone when he shows his ‘need’ by running away,” Avon snapped.

  
Cally made a startled movement.  The irony of his words struck him forcefully.  He wondered if the magnitude of his many mistakes was as obvious to the others as it was to her.   He could only hope not.  And hope for a second chance.

±

“So President Sarkoff’s leads all fizzled,” Steelgrave said.

“Sarkoff was only guessing.  Blake didn’t tell him where he was going.”

Steelgrave commiserated with a little backhanded punch, oddly gentle.  The rest of Liberator’s crew had left the hold, and between the two of them alone Avon found it acceptable.  Even comforting.

The usually cavernous hold looked oddly small, filled by the yacht.  Avon did not like to think how empty it would seem when it was gone.

Steelgrave glanced at his ship as if he, too, felt reluctant to get on with it.  “I meet with the buyer for my neutrotope tonight.  Everything looks good, but if you hear I got my ass in trouble, don’t do anything about it.  I’m on my own now.”

 _Stay_ , Avon wanted to say.  But Steelgrave would be safer with the protection of Terra Nostra influence.  He could hope for no help from a Resistance that would cheer the mob’s demise almost as much as the Federation’s.  Likewise, Avon knew the price on his own head would preclude any reliable haven for him with Steelgrave’s cohorts.

“I worry about the kind of trouble you’ll wind up in sooner or later more than I worry for me.”

“Nevertheless.” Avon warned him.  “The same goes.  Don’t get involved.”

Steelgrave sighed.  “Next time we meet, it’ll probably be in hell.  Until then…” he tossed it off with a little shrug.  “Survive.”

Avon gave him a shark smile.  “I intend to.”

“Uh-unh.  I mean here.”  Steelgrave tapped Avon’s chest over his heart.

Avon’s throat constricted.  He snarled, pulling Steelgrave to him.  Through the cloth separating them, he felt Steelgrave’s heart beat against his own.  They looked into each other’s eyes.

Avon freed him.

Steelgrave turned and climbed into the yacht.  As the hatch slid closed he pursed his lips, almost too quick to see, in a kiss.

±


End file.
